COMMENTARY : South Florida, Once Racing’s Jewel, Now Cluttered With Junk

Be careful about what you wish for, an adage advises, because your wishes might come true.

That advice might apply to the management of Gulfstream Park, which has sought for decades to establish a position of superiority over Hialeah Park. Gulfstream fought to convince courts, legislatures, racing commissions and the public that it deserved the prime midwinter racing dates and that it was Florida’s No. 1 track.

This season Gulfstream has not merely established its supremacy but has achieved total victory. Hialeah shut down after attempting unsuccessfully to operate a second-rate race meeting; the track appears to be on the verge of extinction. Now that its wishes have come true, what has Gulfstream won?

- The quality of Florida’s midwinter racing hit an all-time low this year. The day-to-day competition was poor, and the state of the stakes racing was epitomized by the Florida Derby on Saturday, when Unbridled beat a mediocre field with the slowest winning time in the race since 1955.

- Disgruntlement in the grandstand and in the backstretch was high. Fans complained about the quality of racing, about the rail-favoring track bias and about numerous aspects of Gulfstream’s operation, but it was the horesemen who were most vociferous in their dislike of Gulfstream’s racing strip.

- Business plummeted. After years of steady growth, Gulfstream’s handle is down 14% from last year.

Many of Gulfstream’s woes have their roots in the ancient conflict with Hialeah.

For years both tracks expended energy and political capital fighting each other instead of working for their sport’s overall well-being. While tracks in other states have prospered from the legalization of off-track betting and intertrack betting, and from tax breaks to permit the increase of purses, Hialeah and Gulfstream couldn’t get any of these benefits.

As a result, purse money in Florida has fallen far behind other major racing states, and even if a Northern trainer were inclined to bring his horses to Florida, it would be almost crazy for him to do so.

“We can’t expect a horse to come here and run for a $100,000 purse when he can run for $300,000 or $400,000 elsewhere,” Gulfstream President Doug Donn acknowledged. The racing here has therefore borne a distressing resemblance to the ordinary year-round racing at Calder and, indeed, Calder horses have won most of the major stakes this winter.

Despite the economic disincentives in recent years, many major stables continued coming to Florida because of the special lure of Hialeah. It is America’s grandest race track, and even when it didn’t have the prime racing dates, top horsemen like Woody Stephens and John Veitch went there every year because they loved training their horses on the Hialeah racing surface. This year, however, everything changed.

When Florida “deregulated” thoroughbred racing, and permitted tracks to run head-to-head with each other, Hialeah had to recruit lesser stables with cheap horses to fill its stable area. There was no room for the outfits like Stephens and Veitch, who were forced to move to Gulfstream. With more cheap horses and fewer good ones populating the stalls in South Florida, the quality of competition at Gulfstream declined noticeably.

From the standpoint of a bettor, the midwinter racing in South Florida used to be the best in America. A typical card at either Gulfstream or Hialeah would consist of 10 wide-open 12-horse races, all with exacta and trifecta betting. The fields were so evenly matched that it was always possible to get big odds on legitimate contenders; huge payoffs abounded.

But this year, almost every field was cluttered with junk, with 50-to-1 shots and 100-to-1 shots who didn’t have a chance. And since the rail-favoring, speed-favoring bias effectively eliminated stretch-runners on many days, the racing became even less competitive.

There are, of course, many ways that Florida racing could be improved and strengthened, but most of the scenarios require a healthy Hialeah. Despite its geographic and demographic disadvantages, the track still commands immense affection from fans and horsemen.

A popular proposal over the years has been the creation of a “Saratoga meeting” for Hialeah, a short, high-class meeting during the prime part of the winter calendar. But this is not going to happen.

Gulfstream and Calder are both owned by breeder Bert Firestone and a group of Japanese investors; they are not going to relinquish their chance to assume total control of racing here in order to assist Hialeah.

And even if they were willing to be magnanimous, Hialeah’s intransigent owner, John Brunetti, seems unwilling to accept compromise. His latest “solution” to Florida’s problems was to give Hialeah permanent possession of the prime 65 midwinter racing dates.

All of the track owners share blame for the decline of Florida racing, and it is hard for any fan to feel sympathy for them. They have spoiled the greatest game in the world.

In the past, if I had been given the choice of playing the horses at only one race meeting a year, I would have chosen the midwinter season at Gulfstream or Hialeah without hesitation. The racing was so exciting and challenging that I couldn’t wait to open the Racing Form every morning.

Those days have ended.

When I left here Monday, I felt as if I were saying a final farewell to a longtime love. The memories were beautiful, but the magic is gone.